Death penalty threat by Gaddafi's friends

Scan page 2

Gaddafi with Algerian leader Boumdienne The death penalty is hanging over 30 trade union leaders in Tunisia.

• Arrested in the wake of the general strike and violent uprising of 26 February, 26 of them had been in prison for seven months before they came to trial this month.

All were leading officials in the state-organised UGTT (General Union of Tunisian Workers), including its former general secretary, the veteran nationalist Habib Achour.

Although charged with attempts to foment civil war and 'change the form of government' , these bureaucrats and opportunists are totally innocent of any desire to overthrow Bourguiba's one-party dictatorship.

The mass movement which drove them forward into conflict with the government was certainly none of their making.

As the world crisis of capitalism wracked the under-develop. ed economy of Tunisia, workers experienced a headlong fall in their living-standards and the growth of already mountainous unemployment, especially among youth.

Workers responded to the attacks of capitalism and anti-working class policies of the government with increasingly The working class in Sri Lanka has be en driven into retreat or led to defeat by an unrivalled variety of sharp demands through the UGTT, and by organising independently of the union and its This posed as serious a threat for Achour and his fellows as it did for the government leaders of the Destour 'Socialist' Party (PSD).

The UGTT had been established by Bourguiba as a corporate union. to function as a wing of the state, and its highest officials sit on the leading committees of the PSD.

• It was this authority, even more than their close links with the Gaddafi dictatorship in neighbouring Libya, which gave Achour and his clique their base of power in the endless rivalries within the ruling elite.

Unable to dissipate the mass movement, they were forced to try and place themselves at its head if their base was not to be shattered beyond repair.

This fatal decision may well have cost them their lives. The mass movement developed into a general strike and working class uprising, led by youth.

Bourguiba's government fell back on the army to defend its rule, and the movement was crushed with the killing of hundreds of workers and the arrest of many hundreds more.

Now the regime has finally set up a kangaroo court to frame Achour and other prominent leaders.

Embarrassing

Gaddafi's foreign secretary scurried off to Tunis during the trial when Libyan arms' were embarrassingly discovered in the south of the country, and this little misunderstanding seems to have been ironed out.

Achour's fair weather friends have once again shown themselves to workers as well practised in adjusting to sudden changes in climate.

No doubt Gerry Healy's opportunist daily Newsline will be able to expound to its readers the principled revolutionary basis of what appears to be yet another betrayal of the international working class by the 'socialists' of the Libyan Jamahirryah. been tested wanting in thi advanced workers over in Sri Lanka. deported.

In these conditions the defendants themselves have refused to recognise the validity of the court by giving evidence.

Whether • the Bourguiba regime determines to press ahead and execute the unionists, or opts for some other course of action, it can count on uncritical support from at least one quarter.

Since the smashing of the general strike, the Libyan dictatorship has been indecently eager to demonstrate its friendship for these enemies of the working class who rule Tunisia.

and found powerful and ruggles of twenty years Vietnam's breach with China and her integration into the Soviet bloc last week.

Meeting in Ulan Bater (capital of pro-Soviet Outer Mongolia) the Executive Committee of Comeconthe Soviet-led .. economic union-resolved to take over about a hundred major capital projects abandoned when China cut off economic aid to Vietnam in July.

Comecon is also to give increased aid for modernising the vital rail way line between Hanoi and Saigon.

This major aid from Comecon-of which Vietnam has been a member only since June-cements Vietnamese dependence on the Soviet Union and is an important step in the Kremlin's struggle for political influence against China in South East Asia.

THE 'democrats' of the Janata coalition took one year to repeal the government's powers of imposing detention without trial.

It has taken them only six months to recognise such legislation as a necessary evil', and to advise the government of each state to re-introduce these powers.

----- pull-quotes -----

moves in The seal was put on

JANATA CRACKDOWN